vSphere Metro Storage Cluster with vSphere 5.5

I had a couple of questions around the exact settings for vSphere Metro Storage Clusters with vSphere 5.5. It was the third time in two weeks I shared the same info about vMSC with vSphere 5.5 so I figured I would write a quick blog making the information a bit easier to find through google. Below you can find the settings required for a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster with vSphere 5.5. Note that in-depth details around operations / testing can be found in this white paper: version 5.x // version 6.0.

1. VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL = True
2. Das.maskCleanShutdownEnabled = True 
3. Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL = 0 

I want to point out that if you migrate from 5.0 or 5.1 that Host Advanced Setting “VMkernel.Boot.terminateVMOnPDL” replaces disk.terminateVMOnPDLDefault (/etc/vmware/settings). Das.maskCleanShutdownEnabled is actually configured to “true” by default as of vSphere 5.1 and later, but personally I prefer to set it anyway so that I know for sure it has been configured accurately. Then there is Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL, this setting is new in vSphere 5.5 as discussed here. Make sure to disable it, as PDLs are likely to be temporary there is no point removing the devices and then having to do a rescan to have them reappear, it only slows down your process recovery. (EMC also recommends this by the way, see page 21 of this PDF on vMSC/VPLEX).

** UPDATE 20-March 2016 **

When using vSphere 6.0 or higher, please be advised that Disk.AutoremoveOnPDL needs to be set to 1 (default value) in order for “PDL Scenarios” to be handles correctly in vMSC based infrastructures. Please do not change the default value, or when upgrading to vSphere 6.x please set this value to 1 when changed in previous version.

** UPDATE 20-March 2016 **